Songs of the Wasteland
by mystikmarymakespunch
Summary: Written in a similar style to GOT, each chapter tells the story of a different character in the Commonwealth of the year 2287.


1

Nat

Nat woke up at the same time she did every day. She woke up in the same bed, in the same shack, in the same city, with the same thoughts. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and threw back her blanket, she heard her sister downstairs mumbling to herself. Nat immediately knew what her older sister was up to; writing her latest article for her self-ran newspaper. Piper, who was a good ten years older than Nat, was a journalist. Although the rest of the city would refer to her as a Rumor Mill. Nat sold her sisters newspaper outside their shack after school every day. For three to four hours a day, Nat would stand on her plastic crate and shout the headlines to passersby. Piper had been on a "People replaced with Synths" kick for more than a year now, and was convinced their mayor was replaced by the Institute with a synth made to look exactly like him.

Nat pulled on her clothes as she thought about Blue, Piper's new friend and story. Blue, as Piper so lovingly named him, was from two hundred years in the past. Well, he wasn't a _time traveler_, per se. More like he and his family were cryogenically frozen in a vault just as the Great War began. Blue sat in the same position for two hundred years, only to be woken up and witness his wife be murdered and his infant son kidnapped. Then, he was frozen once more. Unfortunately he had no idea how much time had passed since the kidnapping and waking up a second time. He was running into road blocks at every turn he took in trying to find information about his son. Piper was trying desperately to help get Blue's story out to the public and turn their focus to the Institute, which resulted in hours of interviewing Blue on his travels every time he came back to Diamond City.

Sometimes he would have a companion or two with him. One time he even brought his dog, Dogmeat, and Nat had a good time playing with the German Shepard. The city's local Detective, Nick Valentine, would also join in on the late-night interviews with Blue. Valentine had even accompanied Blue on a few adventures himself, occasionally bringing back a souvenir for Nat in the process. Nat loved the gifts the two men would bring her, and she kept them all on display in her loft bedroom in the shack. She had an old "telephone" sitting on her nightstand, and she had not known what it was until Blue explained it to her. It used to be a device where people could connect and speak to each other in a matter of seconds. It was a part of a booming era of technology hundreds of years ago and Nat dreamt about what her life would have been like had she been born before the Great War.

She loved listening to Blue's stories of his life before the war. The way he talked about his wife Nora and their baby son Shaun. She could tell he was sad whenever he spoke of them, so she tried not to ask too many questions about them. She stuck to asking how the cities operated, were they as dirty as they are now, did the Braumin have two heads, or one? Nat was shaken from her thoughts by the voice of her sister calling her name.

"Nat? You awake? I've got a sweet roll for you!" Piper called from the bottom of the ladder.

"Be right down!" Nat replied as she pulled on her shoes and zipped up her jacket. It was colder in their shack this winter than it had been the previous one. Piper did her best to make sure the fire in the barrel circulated evenly throughout the shack, but there was only so much she could do. She had thought about getting a second one, but decided to move Nat's mattress next to hers once the colder nights started. It's what the usually did to keep warm over the years. The Commonwealth had become notorious for harsh, cold winters and sweltering summers since the nuclear fallout in the war two hundred years prior.

"Blue should be back in a coupl'a days, I wonder what he's gonna bring ya this time?" Piper nudged her sister as she sat down on the couch. Nat accepted the sweet roll and took a bite.

"I hope it's a gun. I want to learn how to shoot. It's not fair that you know and I don't." Nat said with a mouth full of sweet roll.

"The only reason I know how is because you were too young to learn when we were on our way to this Great Green Jewel of a city, remember? You were what, six, seven when we made the journey?" Piper rolled her eyes.

"I'm fourteen now, don't you think it's time I learn to defend myself? Please?" Nat begged her older sister.

Piper laughed, "Okay, I'll mention it to him. Now finish breakfast and get to school!"

Nat inhaled the rest of her roll, put on her winter jacket and strolled out the door, with thoughts of the time before the war tucked far into the back of her mind.


End file.
